of stone steps to the second
terrace. Again a statue with her features met her eye. Frisoni had
designed the pedestal. She remembered how she had laughed at the Italian
for drawing a figure of Time with huge wings and holding giant
sickle-blades in his oversized hands. She had called it awkward and
ill-conceived, and the Italian had told her that Time was an awkward
giant; that he crushed strength and glory sometimes, and left weakness
and shame to live. She had hardly noted the answer then, but it came back
to her now. She looked at the sickle-blades and shuddered, knowing that
Time had mown her down at last.

* * * * *

All day the Landhofmeisterin busied herself with her books, with playing
upon the spinet, and singing her favourite songs. She was a prey to
fearful unrest. Night fell, the hunters had returned, and yet his
Highness sent no word to her he had called 'Life of my Life.' Perchance
he was much occupied. The Prussian King was an exacting guest, she told
herself; framing excuses, reasons, all the pitiful resources of a woman's
heart, to explain away her beloved's coldness. The fact that the
courtiers held aloof from her caused her no pain, only bitter anger, yet
even for these she elaborated reasons of absence. How often had she
wearied of these people's importunities, how often longed to be left in
peace, and yet now she would have given vast sums could she have seen her
antechamber full again. She knew that Friedrich Wilhelm's visit would
terminate on the morning following the wild-boar sticking in the Kernen
forest. Would he go, this rough, virtue-loving despot? She remembered how
he had tarried four whole weeks at Dresden when he had paid a visit to
Augustus the Strong some years before. And this in spite of his
disapproval of the reigning favourite, the Countess Orzelska, and the
many lesser stars of that licentious court. Good Heavens! would he stay
four weeks at Ludwigsburg? She smiled; even in her despair there was
something humorous in her being which no sadness could dull, and she
found her own dismay at the honoured guest's possible procrastination a
trifle comic.

Eberhard Ludwig must come back to her--he must; she repeated it over and
over again. The night brought her no rest; always the same hammering
thought, the torturing, nagging possibilities, the tangle of
recollections. Sometimes she slipped away for a few moments into a
restless sleep, but her dreams wer